The Will in its Theological Relations

Preliminary Statements – 17
Analysis and Definition of the Will – 30
Other Definitions and Explanations – 45
The Common Doctrine of Determinists Pointed Out – 46
The Argument Against that Doctrine Begun – 48
The Great Question Signalized and Cleared of Irrelevant Issues – 49
The Hypothesis of Pre-Earthly Existence Briefly Refuted – 52
A Separation Demanded Between the Consideration of Man’s Estate of Innocence and that of his Fallen, Unregenerate State – 55
Was Man Necessitated to Sin by God’s Efficiency? – 57
Did God Efficiently Decree to Produce the First Sin? – 57
The Doctrine of the Privative Character of Sin – 60
Did God Decree Efficaciously to Procure the Commission of the First Sin? – 63
Did God Decree so to Order and Dispose Adam’s Case as to Render the First Sin Necessary? – 64
Did God Refrain from All Decree Respecting the First Sin? – 67
Conclusion that God Decreed to Permit the First Sin – 75
Calvin’s Doctrine on this Subject – 77
Examination of the Scriptural Account of the Facts in Adam’s Case – 79
Adam Created in Integrity – 79
Adam as Probationer – 82
The Specific Test of Adam’s Obedience – 87
The Inducement to the First Sin – its Genesis – 87

Positions Deducible from Preceding Analysis of the Fact’s of Adam’s Case – 90
Here the Great Argument for Determinism Encountered – 92
First Form of the Argument Against Self Determination Charging an Absolute Commencement – 92
Second Form, Charging a Reductio ad Absurdum – 98First Counter-Argument: Determinism Liable to the Same Difficulty – 99
Second Counter-Argument: Determinism Destroys Man’s Responsibility for his Intellectual Opinions – 101
Third Counter-Argument: Determinism Furnishes no Competent Account of the Origin of Motives – 105
Fourth Counter-Argument: Determinism Traverses the Usus Loquendi [way of speaking] and the Convictions of the Race – 113
The Determinist Theory at Least Checked by these Arguments – 118
That Theory Positively Overthrown by our Fundamental Intuitions and the Scriptures – 119
Invariableness of the Law of Determinism Disproved – 120
Recapitulatory Statements – 120
The Theory of Edwards Convicted of Self-Contradiction – 121

Vindication of Foregoing Views From the Charge of Inconsistency with Calvin and the Calvinistic Standards – 123
Statement of the Author’s Position – 125
Copious Citations from Calvin to Prove: that he Distinguished Between the Necessity of Man’s Sinning in his Fallen, Unregenerate Condition and the Absence of Necessity as to Adam’s Sin – 138
That Calvin Held the First Sin not to Have Arisen from Imperfection in Man’s Original Make – 144
That Calvin did not Hold the Distinction Between the Freedom of the Will and the Freedom of the Man – 146
That Calvin Distinguished Between the Freedom and the Spontaneity of the Will – 146
That Calvin Affirmed for Man in Innocence the Liberty, or Power, of Contrary Choice – 147
That Spontaneity may, but Freedom Cannot, Consist with Necessity – 153
Discussion of the Question, What Freedom was Lost by the Fall? – 154
That Calvin’s Doctrine was that Man’s Present Inability was not Original, but is Penal – 158
That Calvin Maintained the Self-Determination of the Will in the External and Civil Sphere – 160
Did Calvin Hold the Lubentia Rationalis [Rational Spontaneity] View? – 161
Palpable Contradiction Between Edwards and Calvin as to the Status Quaestionis Concerning the Will – 163
Citations from Calvinistic Symbols [Creeds] to Prove the Foregoing Positions – 166
Gallic Confession – 166
Scotch and Second Helvetic Confessions – 167
Canons of the Synod of Dort – 168Formula Consensus Helvetica – 170
Westminster Standards – 171
Striking Testimonies from John Witherspoon and James Thornwell – 177
Concluding Remarks – 178

Investigation of Calvin’s doctrine continued – 216 His doctrine as to the relation of God’s agency to the sins of the wicked – 218 His doctrine as to the relation of God’s agency to the first sin – 226 His apparent affirmations of its necessity: doubtful – 231 Discussion of this view – 232 Doctrine of Supralapsarians as to God’s agency in the first sin – 239 Refutation of the Supralapsarian position – 240 Doctrine of the privative character of sin again adverted to – 247 Hypothesis of a Deficient Cause for the first sin discussed – 248 Discussion of view of some Supralapsarians that Adam was a Positive Cause of the first sin, as sin – 257 God the first cause of beings and their powers, and man a derived and subordinate first cause of sinful acts – 259 Results of the argument summed up – 261

The great Necessitarian argument, that if God had not made certain the first sin He could not have foreknown it, considered – 263 The disproportion between this one argument and the many arguments against which it is pitted – 265 The argument precisely stated – 268 The proof from prophecy refuted – 269 The proof from God’s knowledge considered – 272

The Necessitarian’s position as to the nature of God’s knowledge proved to be self-contradictory – 275 His argument as to the ground of God’s knowledge – 289 Chargeable with proceeding in a vicious circle – 290 Contradictory to a fundamental postulate of pious Necessitarians – 294

The doctrine of contingent causes and events discussed – 294

Inconsistent with admitted Calvinistic doctrine – 295

The proof from the infallible connection between foreknowledge and the events foreknown considered – 308 Statement of conclusion – 315

1. The distinction between the spontaneity and the deliberate election of the Will – 401 2. In his estate of innocence man possessed a self-determining power of the Will – 401 3. In his fallen, unregenerate estate man is devoid of self-determining power of the Will, in spiritual things – 402 In that estate he still possesses such a power in the merely natural sphere – 404

Elements involved in the scheme of recovering grace – 410 Effect on the Will produced by regeneration – 412 Effect on the Will produced by justification and adoption – 415 Effect on the Will produced by Sanctification – 417 The Spiritual Conflict: the seventh chapter of Romans – 418 The conflict portrayed in the last part of that chapter proved to be true only of the regenerate man – 418 The contents of this position developed as to the Will – 421 Proofs that entire sanctification is not attained in this life – 422 The moral law not a standard of conscious justification – 425 Imperfect obedience to the moral law accepted only from the believer – 426 The moral law not a source of sanctification – 426 Conclusion from the unrelaxed obligation of the believer to obey the moral law as a standard of sanctification – 427 The continued operation of sin in the believer proved – 427 Two conflicting natures in the believer proved – 429 Effect of that fact upon the Will – 433 Paul’s meaning in denying that it was he who sinned – 434 Characteristic of the believer differentiating him from the unbeliever – 436 These views guarded against misapprehension and abuse – 437

Relation of the holy and sinful spontaneities in the believer as to their active manifestations – 444 Relation of the divine determining efficiency to the believer’s renewed Will – 446 The believer’s renewed Will possessed of some deliberate election, and not always determined by grace – 450 This view expounded and guarded – 453 Proofs that God often leaves believers to the undetermined elections of their own renewed Wills – 455

First proof: Believers often negligent of duty – 455 Second proof: The temporary backsliding of believers – 456 Third proof: Prayer for increase of grace legitimate – 457 Fourth proof: Difference between believer’s as to growth in grace – 460 Fifth proof: Difference between the final rewards of believers – 463

The perfect removal of sin – 479 The complete destruction of the mutability of the Will – 479 Fixed habits of holiness – 480 The infusion of determining grace – 481 The exclusion of temptation, internal and external – 482 The transcendent experience of Death, Resurrection, the last Judgment and Eternal Realities – 483 The glorious environment of Heaven – 483